Intel claims 65 nanometre breakthrough

CHIP GIANT INTEL is expected to announce today that it has succeeded in producing an SRAM using 65 nanometre technology.

The chip circuit gates are also a third smaller than using the current 90 nanometre process technology, Intel will claim.

Intel is currently shifting the vast majority of its manufacturing capacity over to 90 nanometres, but generally tests new shifts on SRAMs. For example, when it started creating 90 nanometre tech, it also announced an SRAM first, based on the process.

Intel claims that this is a vindication of Moore's Law. Gordon Moore (pictured) postulated in 1965 that the number of transistors on a chip will double every eighteen months**. .The big problem in shifting process technologies a scale downards is leakage, but Intel has denied those type of problems have dogged its 90 nanometre technology.

In a statement, Intel said: "The second generation of Intel strained silicon increases transistor performance by 10 to 15 percent without increasing leakage. Conversely, these transistors can cut leakage by four times at constant performance compared to 90nm transistors. As a result, the transistors on Intel's 65nm process have improved performance without significant increase in leakage."

Five years ago, an Intel architect estimated that in 10 years' time, a microprocessor might have a mind to match that of a bumble bee.

It has committed to starting to use 65 nanometre technology in some production during next year. Generally speaking, the engineers work on the process under tight test conditions before it's migrated to Intel factories worldwide.

One nanometre is equivalent to 10 angstroms or one millimicron. To help you understand it better, that's one billionth of a metre. That's around a ten thousandth of the diameter of a human hair.

That's small. We can't begin to estimate how many angels could dance on the head of a 65 nanometre pin. Intel said that 10 million of such transistors could fit on the tip of a ballpoint pen. µ

* HERE'S a couple of slides from Intel's presentation.

** A READER notes the "law" started off as 12 months, but Intel says it's around a "couple of years" now.